Thursday, September 17, 2015

Donald Trump owns the time of possession statistic.

Donald Trump thinks it "unfair" that he got more talking time than anyone else at the GOP debate.

“A lot of them are friends of mine and they got no airtime last night,” Mr. Trump said “It was a little bit unfair to a lot of other people.”

Perhaps he does. Still, there is a reason why time of possession is such a closely watched statistic for NFL games: the team with the ball controls the game. In a debate, the guy talking controls the debate.

With 4,581 words spoken last night, Donald Trump had almost twice as much to say as Carly Fiorina, who spoke 2,694 words. So while Donald Trump might not have been as theatrically dominating as in Debate 1 (there was no Megyn Kelly setting him up for a devastating one-liner), he still owned the stage to a degree that has to have political pundits everywhere scratching their heads.

In the runup to the debate, CNN devoted 78% of their coverage to Donald Trump, commanding a whopping 580 minutes of coverage out of 747 minutes total.

According to Google Trends, Donald Trump topped all candidates in Google searches prior to the debate.

In media time before the debate, in viewer interest prior to the debate, and talking time during the debate, Donald Trump is beating all comers on time-of-possession.